Why Rural Americans Keep Waiting for Fast Internet, Despite Billions Spent (wsj.com) 169
The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars on several rounds of programs to upgrade internet speeds in rural areas over the past decade. Despite those efforts, many residents are still stuck with service that isn't fast enough to do video calls or stream movies -- speeds that most take for granted. From a report: Many communities have been targeted for broadband upgrades at least twice already, but flaws in the programs' design have left residents wanting. The Wall Street Journal analyzed 1.4 million largely rural census blocks that were included in a series of nationwide Federal Communications Commission broadband programs over the past decade. In the latest program, the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, rolled out in 2020, internet service providers won rights to public funding in about 750,000 census blocks, covering every state except Alaska. The Journal's analysis found that more than half of those census blocks -- areas with a combined population of 5.3 million people -- had been fully or partially covered by at least one previous federal broadband program.
Most U.S. households today have access to internet download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and upload speeds of 10 Mbps, according to government data. Although the FCC's programs have made progress, some rural Americans still can't get 4 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds -- the level of service that was the federal standard in 2011. The broadband saga around Heavener, Okla., illustrates some of the problems. Heavener, with a population of around 3,000, is surrounded by cattle pastures and forested hills. Today some buildings on the main streets have good broadband service, but the internet deteriorates outside town, residents say. Much of the area, in Le Flore County, was slated for upgrades under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund in 2020 -- and some of those areas had already been part of prior programs.
Most U.S. households today have access to internet download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and upload speeds of 10 Mbps, according to government data. Although the FCC's programs have made progress, some rural Americans still can't get 4 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds -- the level of service that was the federal standard in 2011. The broadband saga around Heavener, Okla., illustrates some of the problems. Heavener, with a population of around 3,000, is surrounded by cattle pastures and forested hills. Today some buildings on the main streets have good broadband service, but the internet deteriorates outside town, residents say. Much of the area, in Le Flore County, was slated for upgrades under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund in 2020 -- and some of those areas had already been part of prior programs.
Derp! Go figure... (Score:2)
... maybe the "honor system" isn't enough of an incentive to hold Comcast to their word?
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Don't worry. Elon Musk is busy fixing things.
Re:Derp! Go figure... (Score:5, Insightful)
well, he did actually pull this one off.
i'm about 30 miles from the nearest 'city' (10 from 'town') and starlink has been a game changer.
cheaper, faster, vastly less latency than any of the alternatives. it might go against the current anti-elon bandwagon, but starlink does exactly what it was advertised to do.
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well, he did actually pull this one off.
I know.
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oh gotcha. sorry friend; sometimes hard to pick up on sarcasm on such matters.
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Australia's glorious fucked-up multi-technology-mix NBN is the perfect example of how NOT to do it.
"Fibre to the premises is too expensive to roll out to everyone, we'll give fibre to the cities and large towns
That's new fibre to the premise for 1/5 of the premises in large cities and towns, and the rest will be stuck re-using whatever copper based tech they already have in place - we'll just make it "faster".
Of course all that re-used infrastructure is slowly undergoing replacement as it costs far too much to run, driving us costs for everyone.
Any broadband subsidy should stipulate fibre to the premise as the required technology, and 90+% of premises in any area must be connected to retain a monopoly.
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I've been waiting nearly two years for Starlink. I'll believe it when I see it.
Meanwhile, in Hollywood: (Score:2)
AT&T still can't deliver more than 1 Mbps upload here, either. I guess it must be too "rural."
Re: Meanwhile, in Hollywood: (Score:2)
No cost for faulure to deliver. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: No cost for faulure to deliver. (Score:3)
In addition to no consequences for failure, most have had minimal requirements for investment from the companies.
Said differently, the government could fund the region by $1M, the company could drop funding by $750K, and for accounting they can still show the total balance was an increase. The company invested less than before and the people see no increase because the total amount barely kept up with ever-growing costs.
The company shows they increased funding, legislators can show campaign contributors h
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You don't seem to know who the bad guy is. In this case, like always, it's the "private" side of the "public/private" partnership.
Strong regulations can mitigate that to a large degree, but a certain vocal constituency thinks all regulations are evil, so, here we are.
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You don't seem to know who the bad guy is. In this case, like always, it's the "private" side of the "public/private" partnership.
That seems limited. There are plenty of "bad guys" to go around.
Sure, there are the corporations who are looking to make a buck. While a few genuinely want to help people, as a whole it is about corporate profits and shareholder returns. In this case they are regional monopolies who want to draw the problems out for as long as possible, maximizing profits while minimizing what they have to actually do. But they're not the only ones.
There are the politicians who craft laws, sometimes intentionally vague or
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Re: No cost for faulure to deliver. (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't seem to know who the bad guy is. In this case, like always, it's the "private" side of the "public/private" partnership.
Strong regulations can mitigate that to a large degree, but a certain vocal constituency thinks all regulations are evil, so, here we are.
You don't seem to know who the bad guy is. In this case, like always, it's the "private" side of the "public/private" partnership.
Strong regulations can mitigate that to a large degree, but a certain vocal constituency thinks all regulations are evil, so, here we are.
In the case of ISPs, it seems pretty clear that municipal internet service is simply better. I got municipal fiber internet (gpon style) a my new house and it's cheaper for more speed. They didn't dick me about like Zipply/Frontier/Verizon Fios. They sent a real engineer to the house so I could have a constructive discussion with him when their box didn't connect - I was their first residential customer at 2Gig so it took a bit of fiddling but all done in a day. I am fully aware of the hell of getting service through Comcast or Fios (with whoever owns it this week) since I've been there and done that multiple times.
When the people running the ISP are being judged on service quality rather than profit, it's dramatically different.
Remember the context (Score:3)
I can't read TFA behind the paywall. The numbers I saw (the "more than half the blocks..." section) said half the blocks were 5 million people.
If we extrapolate, those 750,000 census tracts are 10 million people, about 3% of the US population. For context, I don't think 97% of US households have running water and electrical service. Shoot, I'd be surprised in 97% have cell coverage.
But that might not be relevant. The next paragraph doesn't mention what portion of US households have 4/1 as the best available service and there's no reason to think it has anything to do with the 5 million people number in the previous paragraph. Hopefully the full article makes this clearer.
So my point is, the numbers matter. Yeah, 4/1 is pretty slow these days. You can read Slashdot and order stuff from Amazon. You can interact with your city or county services (the sort of thing I'd hope the government cares about). No, you can't stream Netflix or play Duke Nukem Online. I'm kinda thinking maybe that goes with the territory: you don't have neighbors so you can sunbathe nude and shoot varmints, but you also don't have fast internet access. Perhaps this is one of the sorts of tradeoffs life is full of.
RE: expectations / reality (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the most frustrating part is that the technology makes it absolutely possible to provide these rural areas with faster service than 4mb down/1mb up!
If that's the "best available service" today, that indicates you've got an ISP using outdated equipment and who has no motivation to upgrade to something more current.
In fact, my guess would be that many of those people only have DSL service as an option, simply because the phone companies were required by law to have that for all of their customers years ago. If you can get a land line phone, then you can get some sort of garbage DSL service. (Often, they promise "speeds up to 6mb down and 1.5mb up" but it depends on how many feet your property is from their central office or a phone box serving as a substation for it, AND the condition of the copper wire and connections. So people paying for that might actually get as little as 512K or 768K speeds.) I used to live in a small town in Western Maryland where that's all Verizon would sell us. Thankfully, Comcast rolled service out there too - so most people used them instead to get real broadband speeds. It was primarily the elderly who stuck with Verizon for a land line + DSL combo. They'd often claim they "didn't think they needed anything faster" since they didn't do much besides email. But then they'd turn around and complain of regular service outages that would go several days at a time, because Verizon did the bare minimum to maintain the copper infrastructure.
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If you can get a land line phone, then you can get some sort of garbage DSL service. (Often, they promise "speeds up to 6mb down and 1.5mb up" but it depends on how many feet your property is from their central office or a phone box serving as a substation for it, AND the condition of the copper wire and connections. So people paying for that might actually get as little as 512K or 768K speeds.)
But in any sort of spread-out rural area, the wire distance limit keeps the DSL coverage area small. Even in my rural town of high-end retired, the people with the fanciest houses are stuck with nothing better than a crappy wireless ISP. If Starlink works, it will change everything.
Re: expectations / reality (Score:2)
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Even in my rural town of high-end retired, the people with the fanciest houses are stuck with nothing better than a crappy wireless ISP.
Thus proving the point being made, because a decent wireless ISP is dirt cheap to install (think "cantenna on a pole").
If Starlink works, it will change everything.
It works.
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Whether Starlink works sort of comes down to your definition of "works". Sure you can get good speeds with Starlink if you aren't using it in an overly populated area. The problem is that that "good speed" is going to cost you a pretty penny. The upfront costs are >$500 and the monthly cost is >$100. If you want to actually use a proper router you will also need to shell out more money for an ethernet adapter (assuming you have a gen 2 dish since the first gen dishes actually had an ethernet port on t
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Sure you can get good speeds with Starlink if you aren't using it in an overly populated area
I'm paying $127/month now for good broadband over cable, which I get because although I'm in a rural area I live on a connector street with cable. If I were on the next street over, cable is not available. In such a situation, paying $500 for a satellite modem and $100/month is in the long run not much different. Starlink is designed for less populated areas, not for urban locations with dense networks of physical cable.
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If Starlink works, it will change everything.
For sure. It'll give cover to the regional monopolies that don't want to actually build out their network like they've been paid to do.
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WISP, or wireless ISP: Local wireless relayed house-to-house from a central point fed by a physical connection. Starlink doesn't have wires either, but it's a totally different implementation..
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> Yeah, 4/1 is pretty slow these days
Can't read TFA either, but if that is 4 Mbps down, sure you can stream Netflix. I watched Netflix on a 1.5 Mbps DSL...as long as it wasn't being oversold by CenturyLink. It may not be high def, but it works just fine. May not stream to five different family members, either.
As someone in a rural area, if you are crunched for bandwidth, youtube is absolutely the best. Google knows what they are doing.
Note: I despise CenturyLink and they are consistently at the top of m
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Whether you can stream Netflix on a 4mbps connection comes down to the data caps on your service. I only have access to cell based Internet and could theoretically stream Netflix to my hearts content but anything over ~20GB per month will start costing me close $150+. I guess if ultra low quality video is ok I could stream a fair amount of Netflix at lowest setting within that 20GB.
Re:Remember the context (Score:4, Informative)
Behind the paywall: archive link [archive.ph].
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Thanks, chill. The link is helpful, but the archive story is missing information from TFA. Smoot123, How hard is it to open TFA in a private/incognito link?
It seems like at least once a month someone complains about "Why is the link behind a paywall?!" And at least once a month someone suggests the solution. Perhaps too many people are reading /. on their phones and don't have the features available in a full browser?
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So you didn't read the article, or do any research, but just made up some numbers that "seemed right" you. Job well done! Can't refute that!
For context, actual access to electricity in the U.S. is so high that on a five digit percentage quotation it rounds off to 100.00%. Virtually the last body of U.S. citizens without access to electricity are about 100,000 Native Americans on reservations (rounding up), or 99.97% coverage. This can even be rectified without having to connect to a grid, using solar power,
Ah, the US... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Here [youtube.com]'s a song you might enjoy.
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Politicians are replaced every few years.
Politicians should be replaced every few years. Unfortunately this is not really the case anymore. Career politicians are a large part of the problem. Term limits might help.
Re:Ah, the US... (Score:4, Insightful)
Politicians should be replaced every few years. Unfortunately this is not really the case anymore. Career politicians are a large part of the problem. Term limits might help.
As the saying goes, "Politicians are a lot like diapers. They need to be changed often and for the same reason."
If you really want to see change, we need to amend the Constitution with a single statement:
"Every law or resolution having the force of law shall relate to but one subject, and it shall be expressed in the title."
Why? The problem has a lot more to do with the stuff they sneak into bills as riders. Eliminate the riders because if something is so important as part of federal legislation that it must be included as a rider, it's important enough to stand up on its own for a separate vote.
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I know countries are different, but: I live in a rural community in Europe. Population 400 or so. Our internet was recently upgraded from 1Gb/s to 10Gb/s. Costs about $80/month.
Bully for you - Europe is a lot "denser" (population-wise) than the US. In America, there are people that live 3+ hours from the nearest city, a feat likely not possible in countries like France, Germany, England, etc.
Take out a map of your "rural community" and draw a circle 100 KM (about 60 miles) radius and tell me how many major cities fall inside that circle - I can do that exercise in all but the smallest of US states and the answer will be zero.
Your cute definition of "rural" doesn't map into this di
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You've got it backwards. The problem is the private entities that are supposed to be providing service to those rural communities. We've paid them to build out their infrastructure, after all. Fines and prison time are the correct solutions here.
To correct the problem: Tree, rope, politician - some assembly required.
Are we supposed to believe you came up with that by yourself? Do you actually think that's funny?
I live in a rural community in Europe. Population 400 or so. Our internet was recently upgraded from 1Gb/s to 10Gb/s. Costs about $80/month.
I had no idea that some rural communities in Europe were using the dollar...
As with all things government (Score:2)
Our local, semi-rural, ISP has been trying (Score:5, Interesting)
..for years to build a fiber network. The telecom monopolies lie to regulators when they block the project, claiming they serve the area. They don't serve the area and have no plans to serve us in the future, but they still fight hard to prevent anyone else from serving it
FCC Broadband map (Score:3)
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission, FCC, has information, but it is insufficient.
Depends on the state. (Score:5, Interesting)
In NH towns are coting for town wide fiber and thenbacking the bonds for deployment. Those bonds are paid by the company selected to manage it over 20 years. Via a local bond fee. Ours was $8.25 a month. Which means residents who previously could get 3 mbs dsl are now getting gigabyte fiber to the premises for $100 ish dollars a month.(including the above fee)
Which isnt a bad deal.
I have questions about maintiaing siad lines for the bext 20-40 years but it isnt a bad deal
The town can also change the isp since the town owns the lines.
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The town can also change the isp since the town owns the lines.
My city of about 250,000 began a project to run fiber city-wide, and to then allow any ISP to provide service. I live in a state where community broadband is prohibited by law, but public/private partnerships are allowed. The local utility owns and runs the fiber throughout the city, and the private companies provide the service. In theory, multiple companies could provide the service, but only one has signed up so far -- CenturyLink/Quantum Fiber.
I get a symmetrical gig for $65/month. While state Republica
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Is it a good deal? $100/month is way expensive, even for me with a nice salary. I pay $50/month and it's for not very fast and definitely not worth the money, it definitely could be cheaper. Now for someone elderly, $100/month is absurdly high (my mom got suckered into 1GB for 100/month it by AT&T because of the "first year is cheap" ploy, so she's going to start complaining next year because she doesn't understand the details).
Rural America votes irrationally (Score:4, Insightful)
They keep voting for politicians cripple post offices and then criticize the post office for being crippled, UPS and FedEX mark their areas "no delivery" and they keep voting for the same politicians.
Same with high speed internet. They keep voting for politicians who take govt money and give it to private companies without any serious promise or requirement to deliver any real service to the rural folks.
Rural Electrification Board, is a socialist program that taxed the cities to fund wiring up rural America. It was inefficient, it taxed urban Americans unnecessarily and unfairly, but at least the rural voters demanded electricity and they got it, at enormous cost and waste that is usual for govt programs, but it delivered juice to their homes.
The simple truth is, rural America does not want fast internet. It wants other things more. Like Freedom! Freedom to eat steak dinner every day, eventually when they can afford it in the future.
Bingo! (Score:2, Troll)
With proposals like this https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
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I actually think there should be incentives for build-out, but we shouldn't be as taxpayers in the ISP game. Our bureaucracy is already too damn big already.
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What is this steak of which you speak?
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You know, I'll agree with you that "it's largely the fault of politicians" (with some "the US is pretty big and lots of low population density areas" thrown in, but no, I agree there's lots of politics that make the issue worse). What I won't agree with is your conclusion that "it's all the Republican's fault" (or at least, I assume that's your conclusion with the reference to "muh freedom!").
Politicians of on both sides of the aisle eat at the "telco lobby" trough. Democrats fuck over their constituents h
Why are you still asking. (Score:4, Insightful)
(Evereyone) "Why do Rural Americans Keep Waiting for Fast Interne..."
(Common F. Sense) "Corruption you voted for. Next question."
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If I could vote against corruption, trust me, I would.
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If I could vote against corruption, trust me, I would.
In a voting democracy, this isn't impossible. More ethical and moral leadership, starts at the lowest level where change is far more malleable. Work your way up from there.
Funny. I would have taken you more an Opportunist on this. Come on now. Cheer up. I mean, it could still get worse. Next thing you know, Starlink will solve the rural provider problem, eliminate the last-mile burden, and then be sued out of existence by every Donor Class ISP that doesn't want to have their government infrastructure
Delete story please (Score:2)
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Reads slashdot, can't figure out how to bypass a paywall.
https://archive.ph/9Y9wM [archive.ph]
Rural America keeps voting for corrupt politicians (Score:2)
Fixed the Headline. And yes, they've got better choices in their primaries, but those guys don't have enough cash to get their name out there, and the voters pick based on name recognition and how fun the rallies are.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
A rural town of 3000 people (Score:2)
1. Make the rural
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Running a line out into the middle of nowhere is expensive and costs just as much to operate as a line into downtown LA.
Not really on a per mile basis. Trenching costs are much higher in an urban environment with busy roads, gas lines, water lines, power lines and other rights of way to contend with.
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just doesnt generate all that much economy. Running a line out into the middle of nowhere is expensive and costs just as much to operate as a line into downtown LA. Crunch the numbers. If those rural people are made to pay the actual per-person cost, it’ll probably be 10-100 times that the city people will pay. And there are a LOT of rural towns in the US and they are LONG distances apart. This isn’t some compact, efficient European country. So, there are only a few options.
1. Make the rural types pay the actual per-person cost, 10-100 times the cost in the middle of a city. Pissed off people: conservative, rural types.
2. Subsidize the internet. Taxes go up on everyone to pay for it. Pissed off people: literally everyone. Liberal city people because they are subsidizing the countryside, and the rural conservatives will still be angry (even while they enjoy their nice internet) because they hate taxes with the white hot passion of a thousand flaming suns.
3. The countryside gets crappy internet. Slightly unhappy people: conservative, rural types.
Option 3 sounds the best, because as a country we simply cant get our act together to collectively do ANYTHING nowadays.
What I find interesting is this isn't actually the case. Not as profitable doesn't mean unprofitable, and the cost to string fiber along electric poles or bury it in rural ditches is orders of magnitude cheaper than trying to run fiber in a city, where digging is a dangerous exercise on the best day and a very slow process.
A rural area isn't as profitable to serve, but it certainly can be served, as evidenced by the fact that there are very rural coops that DO have fiber internet. I'd imagine they got som
Meanwhile (Score:4, Informative)
Some new-fangled thing made by some African immigrant is now getting rolled out. I've never met the guy but he seems alright.
It's called Starlink [starlink.com] and for like $100/mo. he's providing high-speed Internet using some satellite things that are in some sort of low earth thingamagig.
The great thing is you can order it now and he keeps launching these satellites on the backs of some bird or something.
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and the best part is you can satisfy all of your virtue signaling needs by supporting african american innovation.
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Not to mention he's an immigrant! Shit, we get bad-mouthed down here in the Lone Star state all the time about being anti-immigrant and he's also building this giant set of grain silos, and supposedly the damn things are supposed to put more of these satellites into outer space. He also wants to occupy wall street or is that Mars? I can never get that straight; I think he's gone loco or he's got sunstroke but more power to him.
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I have the African immigrant's thingy (this post is being made through it!) and it's great. Not as fast as a good (note: good!) DSL connection, much less fiber, but it works approximately everywhere. I've installed some more solar panels on my RV to make sure I always have enough juice for the Starlink and my laptop (and RV house loads, obviously), and I no longer need to be home to work (haven't needed to be in the office for years, but now I don't even have to be home).
Next step is to take this onto a b
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Next step is to take this onto a blue water sailboat on the ocean, just gotta figure out how to convince the missus.
Jack Sparrow has the answer: Rum, matey. Enough to sway even the sauciest wench, aye.
Mostly BS? (Score:2)
I live 9 miles from the nearest town in rural Alabama, yet I get (theoretical) 200MB down (100-150 is more realistic).
And might be getting GB (fiber) later this year.
Just put money into Starlink for the REALLY remote houses.
Breaking news! (Score:2)
Government spends a shitload of money and gets little to no results. News at 11.
Do another study, (Score:2)
What internet service? lol (Score:3, Informative)
Where I live is "rural". Heck, might as well call it "wilderness". There's no Internet service here from a broadband provider., and there never will be. My closest neighbor is over 2 miles away. When I moved here, I had to use Verizon's LTE service for internet, and I only get 2 bars here.
But then Starlink came, and saved the day. No more Verizon Jetpack! My Starlink service is great. I do not understand why anyone "rural" that is in the ever-growing Starlink area isn't switching over.
I don't think the answer is having government spend more and mopre taxpayer $$$ on this. Goodness help me, but I worked for several years for Frontier Communications. I know how well this company scams and lies to people about internet speeds, service levels for DSL, etc. They LIVE off the government trough (subsidies), but the service still sucks, and always will suck.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the "problem"?
The people of Heavener obviously don't think high speed internet service reaching the more remote properties outside of town is very important - else they would have raised taxes to pay for municipal wired broadband to those areas.
Just outside of town (close enough that it has public sewers and even cable -- so probably has internet access also) you can buy a 3 bedroom home (1006 Morris Creek Rd, Heavener, OK 74937) on a two acre lot for $125,000 (or less as that's asking). Try finding anything close to that just outside of San Francisco.
Or, you can go outside of town (where there probably isn't any wired internet service available) and buy a 3 bedroom home (43795 Lockhart Ln, Heavener, OK 74937) on almost seven acres for $165,000 (or less as that's asking).
There's upsides and downsides of living in the middle of nowhere.
It seems likely as well that Starlink may soon resolve this problem and we can stop thinking that every shed in America needs high speed wired internet access.
When I'm looking at homes a home isn't considered if it doesn't have wired internet access (the only other utility, as long as a well is practical, that I require is electricity as I don't want to run my own generating plant). Some other people might happily pay less and sacrifice wired internet access. Some other people might be willing to pay more to get "city water" and "city sewer". Let the market decide.
Why should the people "in town" (let alone across the country) subsidize broadband in the middle of nowhere (esp. since Starlink will likely fix the "problem")? Do residents of Heavener pay for human poop cleanup on their main streets and also help pay for human poop cleanup on the streets of San Francisco? Nope, the residents of Heavener just pay for human poop cleanup patrols on their main streets (which is probably such a non-problem that they don't need such patrols because those pooping in the street would probably find themselves in the local jail and, being unable to get drugs and alcohol there, would poop somewhere other than a city street in the future).
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Not to derail you shitting on an entire population, but you do realize that in many states with large rural populations that local schools are predominantly funded by taxes on agricultural land, even though rural people provide single digit percentages of the students? County assessments are disproportionately paid by rural people and often go to parks and recreational areas that the rural populations neither need nor want. Rural roads and road maintenance (like plowing snow) are almost universally neglec
The pace of technology vs bureaucracy (Score:3)
A factor that nobody is talking about is the pace of technology innovation vs the pace of bureaucracy. This issue has been debated for years and thrown around like a political football. Meanwhile, Elon Musk comes along with real satellite internet without involving the bureaucracy and all the sticky fingers along the way. Also, while the landline phone and cable companies are farting around with wired hardware, 5G comes along making hardwired last mile internet much less appealing. And Apple is rumored to be getting into the satellite comms business. If you're a regional ISP, why would you spend the money to install technology that's likely to be obsolete especially when you have to jump through a ton of bureaucratic hoops taking years to get paid.
Uh, maybe because they keep voting Republican? (Score:5, Informative)
Roosevelt and the Democrats created rural electrification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act).
Rural internet is possible. Only an idiot thinks this will ever happen under a Republican administration. For profit companies aren't going to bother. Not enough money in it. They wouldn't have gone for national rural electrification either. Had it been up to them, we'd be as underdeveloped as rural Mexico.
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For profit companies aren't going to bother. Not enough money in it.
SpaceX is. And they're gonna make bank. And then spend the money trying to build a Mars colony, but whatevs.
100 down / 10 up? yikes. (Score:2)
That's terrible.
Rural is not the problem (Score:3)
I live in the northern most county in Idaho. I have a 100mb fiber line to my place. it costs $75 a month. The have slower/cheaper faster/more expensive plans available. I am 500 feet from the county road. It cost me $200 to get it installed. Had I been closer to the road, installation would have been free.
This isn't from Comcast or ATT. It is from a local company which local people started in order to provide internet to Boundary county over 20 years ago.
Federal government internet expansion programs are nothing but a giveaway to giant ISPs. Think defense contract type giveaway. Until that changes, nothing else will.
The federal government could put in place a system of paying local providers to provide rural internet. They just don't wanna.
Meanwhile, in eastern Arizona (Score:2)
Frontier (yes THAT Frontier) has yet another outage leaving land lines including 911 out of service for AN ENTIRE WEEKEND!
https://www.azfamily.com/2022/... [azfamily.com]
Every House Has Electricity, doesn't it? (Score:2)
When we moved from suburban Sacramento, CA to San Antonio, TX, one of my concerns in house-hunting was finding an address that had fast internet service. I had figured that anyplace rural would automatically have terrible service. Turns out that's not the case.
One of the problems with building out a fast cable service is getting permission to hang wires on the power poles. After all, electric power is pretty much everywhere, right? Turns out that a few "rural" electric cooperatives have started running gig
We sold porn (Score:4, Interesting)
A guy went to the county government and begged for enough money to run a pilot project. He would buy the two most common tractor attachments for digging 2 meter deep holes, an enormous spindle of fiber, a pickup truck that can roll it out and some switches and additional accessories.
He then walked down the road offering free fiber internet for 2 years to the farmers if they would attach the hitches to their tractors and dig. If there was farm without a tractor in-between or something residential, the next farmer on the road would dig that as well.
Most of the farmers would say "why would I want to tear up my farm and do that?"
So, the guy brought the farmer to the nearest farm that already had access and opened up porn sites...
Usually, the tractor was digging within a few hours.
They managed to provide access to over 50,000 rural homes, government buildings, schools, churches, etc... over a period of 10 years using this tactic. And the cost to the government was pennies. Then as it was a government project, they privatized it after 2 years and charged reasonable prices.
Of course all the neighboring counties copied the system.
These counties have had some of the fastest Internet connectivity to the home for nearly 20 years now. It's tapered off of course since this is Norway and well... we have fiber everywhere now. We reached speeds years ago where people are buying the cheapest plans since they are generally far faster than anyone really uses.
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Good thing Starlink gonna do what the government couldn't.
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I wasn't aware that "the government" ever got into the ISP business.
There is no failure of government here. The problem lies 100% with the private companies who didn't deliver the infrastructure we paid them to build.
As it happens, just about all of the so-called government waste is due to public/private partnerships. If you want efficiency, you can't do much better than the state. Compare, for example, the US Postal Service to any private delivery company. The good ol' post office has them all beat by
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I guess you have never been to the DMV?
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Anything that costs someone else money isn't a right. You don't get the right to free electricity either.
You want internet in B.F. egypt, cough up the money. Old style satellite, newer starlink, whatever. It's on you. Or move to the city.
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> Or move to the city.
worst advice in this entire thread, under no circumstances should anyone subject themselves to that.
starlink is cheap, and works great -- no 'city' problems needed.
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Cities are desirable places, that's why most people live in them. Just like how cars are desirable and that's why everyone drives, right?
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However, Starlink isn't available (yet) where I live. Two years waiting and counting. Now they're telling me "maybe at the end of the year". In the meantime, 3 megabits download speed where I live.
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Since access to education, protection by law enforcement, access to courts, and health care cost someone else money, they can't be rights either, amirite?
Another "poor people should f_ck off and die quickly" libertarian.
Re:Because (Score:5, Interesting)
Anything that costs someone else money isn't a right. You don't get the right to free electricity either.
You want internet in B.F. egypt, cough up the money. Old style satellite, newer starlink, whatever. It's on you. Or move to the city.
The real issue is that no amount of money can buy internet in many places due to telecom monopoly. Near my childhood home there is a local utility that partnered with an ISP to run fiber in a very rural area to the entire territory they serve. It's fantastic. But if you get a quarter mile out of their territory, even though the ISP wants to hook you up (and has in the past petitioned the telecom monopoly in the area to come to some kind of agreement to serve these homes), the telecom literally won't allow it. It's their area to sell you effectively nonfunctional dsl, and by god they're going to maintain that right just in case at some point in the future they want to do something with you.
In this day and age you should have a right to access of the internet, as in we should do what we did with electricity and make it a legal obligation to make a basic level of service avaliable. Frankly I think it should go one step further, and if a company comes into a monopoly region and offers a higher tier of service the telecom monopoly has only right of first refusal to serve that customer at an equivalent level, and if they decline they lose the exclusive territory.
None of this means free internet, although given how vital the internet is to modern society there probably should be a subsidized base tier of service that is free. Most rural people just want the OPTION TO PAY for internet. They don't even have that due to corrupt lobbying and arcane rules.
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Anything that costs someone else money isn't a right. You don't get the right to free electricity either.
You'd be surprised how many of these internet-denied places have electricity.
If electricity can arrive then so can internet. The only problem is that you're being denied it on purpose by people who don't want to make that investment.
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"Denied on purpose by people who don't want to make the investment"
What investment? Denied by people who don't want to spend millions to get 50 people paying $40 a month? Nope, business is not your strong suit I take it. Pouring money down a toilet because their are whiners who cry "i NEED! I NEED!" might tickle the kind of woke clowns who make up Biden's administration but a business or economy will collapse with that nonsense.
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And, realistically, the more rural customers who choose Starlink, the less chance there will ever be of a physical connection as the profit for those providers would be even less. So, as Starlink gets burdened with more subscribers (or their satellite footprint is capped for -- insert political reason here --) even those happy with Starlink now will be out of luck. Looking at the satellite position graph, it's pretty dense now.
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For literally every other thing in life, capitalistic free markets will beat the pants off of government programs, every single time.
You fail econ 101. Half the course should be about market failures, in other words, when a capitalistic free market will fail to provide optimal results.
The problem with rural internet is that the infrastructure is expensive, and "capitalistic free markets" cannot offer service at a profitable rate. I take it, then, that your solution is to simply leave those people out.
If you need an example, Medicare beats the pants off of private medical insurance.
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The problem with rural internet is that the infrastructure is expensive, and "capitalistic free markets" cannot offer service at a profitable rate. I take it, then, that your solution is to simply leave those people out.
At some point it is up to the homeowner to resolve the issues that befall their home - they chose to be off the beaten path, for various reasons, why must society build out infrastructure to include them? When someone builds a home way outside the city, they are unable to connect to city water/sewar system, so they dig a well and bury a septic system in the yard. We don't talk about running sewar lines tens of miles outside the city to serve the entire community, why exactly is Internet service different?
If you need an example, Medicare beats the pants off of private medical insurance.
Od
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Oddly, when an earlier administration had the opportunity to re-design the US medical system, they chose to push the vast majority of US citizens to purchase expensive health insurance plans from profit-seeking private companies, rather than just expand the marvelous medicare system to cover all Americans - why was that? Didn't they know medicare "(beat) the pants off private medical insurance"?
Because Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, and 40 Republican Senators had been visited by health insurance company lobbyists, and would not vote for a public option (that is, an insurance plan run by the governemnt) because the insurance companies knew they couldn't compete.
So yes, the advantages of Medicare were well known, and the insurance companies found it easier to buy off a few senators rather than compete.
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This guy lives rent-free between your ears, huh?
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Gov screws up everything it touches.
It's not the government lying about service coverage.
It's not the government lying about miles of cable installed.
It's not the government taking money for installing cables the government doesn't own.
It is the voters waiving accountability for the billions of dollars spent.
It is the voters waiving accountability for the fraudulent claims of ISPs.
Re:Government spends money and fails? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's your alternative? Nowhere in the world have private companies solved this problem.
No country in the world is mad enough to rely on private business for infrastructure like roads. Broadband is no different.
The problem you have is corruption and bribery. As bad as the British government is, the scale of it in the US is staggering to me. It's not inevitable, Europe proves that.
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It would be nice if we could agree on a meshing AP standard and plan to give away a certain amount of uplink, and have the mesh carry as much traffic as possible — eventually everything not intercontinental. These days a decent AP ought to be able to handle the job, they have ones with decent RAM now. The power consumption has to be as low as possible given the work it will be doing in order to be acceptable, so it has to work on a low power device like that.
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Wow, you're getting reamed. Are you absolutely certain there's nothing more local available to you? I have had a few different WISPs (some local, one not so local) and the least I've ever had from one was 4 Mbps.